MORE SPIT THAN POLISH Another magazine profile of Houston, another run for the metaphor machine: “Houston is what you might get if you took everything that is really, really great and slightly irritating and crazy in a good way about the South and about America and threw it in one of those rock-polishing tumblers for a spin or two before dumping it all out and leaving everything where it lay.” [Garden & Gun]
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I take that as a compliment. What?
I’m, sorry. But I got a headache halfway through that sentence. Just what the hell does all that mean? Did that say that Houstonians are as dumb as a box of rocks?
Garden & Gun magazine is what you might get if you took everything awesome about gardening and put it together with all of everything totally more awesome about guns and put it in an enema and gave it to Paula Deen while she was singing Dixie. That’s what that’s like, anyway, and it’s pretty sweet.
Huh?
Another version of the same description we’ve heard for the past 5 years. Prior to that, no description was heard. I’d say having any kind of identity is better than none at all. L.A. spent decades being bashed until a new gaggle of journalists discovered the ugly duckling had grown up. I expect a similar timeline for Houston.
Obviously the author is not from Houston. Shame on Garden & Gun for using an outsider who doesn’t understand or really know anything about Houston. And that quote is just ridiculous!
I don’t find anything offensive about that description at all. In fact, it’s right on the money. Houston is, well, unique.
At least we are being mentioned and not ignored, as is usually the case.
I am a native Houstonian, if that is going to make any difference.
using an outsider who doesn’t understand or really know anything about Houston.
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Sometimes an outsider can hit the nail right on the head. Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees.
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read about this fantastic City. This is my Houston. This is my home.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/travel/12houston.html
And it was written by an outsider.
Sounds EXACTLY right.
Better than being called a “Hellhole”….
I like it…except remove “about the south”…
Rocks come out of those tumblers looking like gems!…
…and “leaving everything where it lay(s)” is exactly the Bob Lanier/TheNiche-style development we’ve stupidly tolerated all these years.
Spot on. Just no need to drag “the south” into the mix.
it’s a spot-on description. any town that is known for being both a bubba town with too much money, and for being a mixed bag of international cultures (L.A. x 1/3) is bound to have a weird scene.
I went to college in state, and the most dynamic personalities i ran into were almost always from Houston. It’s the “redneck Tupac who eats dim-sum” guy on campus. Oh, and he wears red wings, costa del mar sunglasses, drives a range rover.
this is, of course, selective of the crowd that goes to Austin, but quite the case.
What pretentious horse manure.